Addressing Homelessness in Clackamas County, Oregon

Social Finance is partnering with the Clackamas County, Oregon Housing and Community Development Division and Margaret Van Vliet of Trillium Advisors to optimize a new, 10-year funding source for supportive housing services and develop a comprehensive approach to ending family homelessness in Clackamas County.

Goals

• Understand barriers impacting family homelessness in Clackamas County
• Better align available funding and resources to county goals
• Adapt performance management system to track progress toward county goals

The Work

Social Finance is supporting Clackamas County to develop and implement a series of recommendations with a goal of ending family homelessness. This work includes:

• Comprehensive system recommendations: Building on an extensive system assessment of the housing challenges facing families, a comprehensive analysis of homeless services data, and engagement with a broad range of community stakeholders, the Social Finance team developed a series of recommendations to address family homelessness in Clackamas County.
• Dashboard development: Developing tangible tools stakeholders can use to understand progress and performance on homelessness, including:
  • A system dashboard that uses Homelessness Management Information System and County contract data to identify demand, utilization, and capacity at a given time.
  • A performance management dashboard to understand homeless services performance against key metrics.
• Community engagement: Partnering closely with service providers, County staff and leadership, individuals with lived experience, and other system partners, to shape project recommendations and implementation.
• Continuous improvement: Establishing continuous improvement processes to identify challenges and adapt implementation with the ultimate goal of building adaptable structures and approaches that can be sustained beyond the initiative.